Ah, the old days. Here are my kids before PUBERTY! Wow.Here they are skiing with their uncle, who I think may be the guy on the end of the two rope in the picture, but it's hard to say at this point.
This uncle has recently moved in with his father, my father in-law, after ending a relationship with a woman named Lena. This is not new. JD has a Modus Operandi which is predictable due to repetition. He is a serial monogamist.
JD met Lena in the parking lot of the legal firm next door to the house he was selling. One minute JD was busily buying a home in Fairfax and the next thing he was dating Lena. Then, weeks after we moved him into this new house, he was renting his house in Fairfax to someone else and moving in with Lena. Lena had a farm and JD always wanted to farm. They set up what we used to call a "truck farming" operation, selling vegetables and knick-knacks at "Lena's Farmstand." Not "Lena and JD's Farm Stand. A couple local papers ran features about Lena and "her business partner, JD."
Lena's parents met at Birkenau or some similarly horrible Nazi death camp and still have the tattoos to prove it. They are also old and half-demented. Lena's mom, to put it charitably, is somewhat needy. She complains constantly and can be very demanding. I suspect, after her life, she deserves to be waited on, but it makes it hard to keep her in nursing homes. Lena takes good care of her parents, who have to live in separate nursing facilities for some reason that just escapes me. Lena tried to explain it to me, but it sounded like a matter of principle, and I couldn't figure out how matters of principle match up with issues of dementia.
Lena and her family are Jews, and Democrats. JD is a Fox listening, Limbaugh chanting, no-listening-to-reason, America-love-it-or-leave-is, Bush-will-go-down-as-the-most-under-rated-president-in-history conservative. My wife's family is full of great people whom I love, but they all come from small rural communities around here -- Clarence, Shellsburg -- and Jewish culture, let alone Democratic Politics, are simply alien. Nana had Lena and JD over for supper and served her best PORK ROAST! Oops.
I grew up in Wichita and some of our family friends are Jews. The best man at our wedding is a Long Island Jew. I think you have to capitalize Long Island Jew. I like, and to a significant extent, "get" Judaism. The deal with Lena and her clan isn't that they're Jews, although that has created some fascinating dynamics at holidays. The deal is that to some degree or another, these people are all channeling "Rain Man."
We had a gathering out at the farm and we had a fire out in a grove of walnut trees. Lena became obsessed about the kids throwing walnuts. At the trees. Not at each other. "Who's throwing walnuts again!" Her brother Jack, who is reportedly an engineer or something in California, asks Lena's permission for everything and reports "they are throwing nuts again!" The man is pushing 50! It was all surreal. Good thing I hadn't quit drinking yet. I sat and got quietly smashed by the fire. Intoxication and inertia were all that saved me from throwing walnuts willy nilly.
We could just never really figure out what made this couple tick. Then, as quickly as harmony began, dissent began to break out. JD and Lena came to events but they didn't stay and JD looked uncomfortable, as though his pants were full and he couldn't escape. Lena was, it turns out, coming along, as a matter of principle. She also began pulling relatives aside, or calling, and talking about how JD is leaving her because he won't quit drinking and she's worried about it. She doesn't realize, or maybe it's another social cue she missed, that JD has moved on, as he always does. We all knew Lena was temporary. They always are, these women.
Marcia, who was pretty and Southern and drank excessively, to the extent it bothered JD, Tina, who lasted a really long time and went hunting and fishing and was the ultimate gal pal, and now Lena, Jewish Farm Stand Operator in rural Iowa, all kicked to the emotional curb, started furiously, ended predictably. One wonders if JD is pondering his fate, sitting on his father's deck, his boxed belongings piled in storage.
This is a family ravaged by depression and emotional distance, which culminated in an awful divorce, the recriminations from which have lasted thirty years. Casualties have included Robyn's brother Greg's estrangement from his father, Robyn's series of difficult and destructive relationships (I do not count myself among them, although she may feel differently sometimes), and, alas, to JD's seemingly mindless repetition of the same pattern: infatuation, haste, distance, detachment. Over and over, world without end, Amen.
Robyn has talked to JD a little. JD says Lena is exaggerating the drinking issue. I would have said the same thing six months ago, about myself. LeRoy, JD's dad, is not a big drinker and will probably comment if JD gets back to his six beer a night consumption pattern.
Truthfully, I have a good deal of love and respect for JD. He has been very kind and he is a good man, who loves his nieces and nephews and would do anything for us. It's sad to see him act out the same play, over and over, with different players.
Today I am grateful for the ability to make new mistakes. The same ones over and over get old. Do something NEW and dumb today!
